If I think about the books that I enjoyed the most, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex is definitely on my top 5. It’s one of those books that got my attention from the first rows and that I enjoyed until I finished reading all the 600 pages.

It starts like this :

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license…records my first name simply as Cal.”

As the background of Cal’s evolution from a little girl to a teenage boy, there’s the story of his Greek family, from his great-great grandparents who came to America to his parents and himself. Eugenides manages to write this book in an incredible authentic style. You almost see in front of your eyes the sunny Greece and the agitated and loud Greeks trying to accommodate to an American life.

Although Cal’s story is quite dramatic (considering the changes in his life and the experiences he is going through), the book is full of funny situations and dialogues full of humor.